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Nukes Against Earth-Impacting Asteroids
TopSpin writes "Flight International reports that scientists at the Marshall Space Flight Center have developed designs for an array of asteroid interceptors wielding 1.2-megaton B83 nuclear warheads. The hypothetical mission for these designs is based on an Apophis-sized Earth impactor 2 to 5 years out. According to NASA, 'Nuclear standoff explosions are assessed to be 10-100 times more effective [at deflection] than the non-nuclear alternatives analyzed in this study." On April 13, 2029, Apophis will pass closer to earth than geosynchronous satellites orbit.
That's true. The potential damage from getting hit is very, very large though - and the probability isn't quite small enough to completely discount. Major meteor impacts have occurred with some frequency on a geological time scale - it seems prudent to actually do the risk assessment and take appropriate action if necessary.
As for the foreign energy independence issue, sure that's important. That doesn't mean that astronomers who specialize in asteroids should drop their careers for it any more than you should drop your career (whatever it is) to worry about potential meteor impacts.
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Even assuming that you are joking, this is a non-issue. The atmosphere and magnetosphere shield us from a metric butt-ton of solar radiation. Space is not pristine, and at risk of being damaged. Space is trying to kill us all, whether by pulling us atom from atom (vacuum), freezing us solid, radiating us 'til we're crispy, or throwing large rocks at us. Just offa the top of my head, my guess is that you could probably fly through the location of a thermonuclear blast in space minutes after the event.
Don't trust anyone under thirty.
April 13, 2029 is a Friday.
The large damage from theoretically possible asteroid impacts doesn't make it any more likely that they will happen. That's a statistical fallacy.
Huh? Of course the damage it would do doesn't make the event more likely, but it makes the event more serious.
If one event is likely, but has minimal impact if it occurs, it might be worth ignoring, in order to concentrate on a less likely event that has disastrous consequences.
Since a large asteroid impact could be a mass extinction event, something capable of wiping out our entire ecosystem -- not to mention civilization -- even if it's unlikely, it's worth working to prevent. Compared to that, everything except the possibility of nuclear war (or equally disastrous environmental collapse) pales in comparison.
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Occurs to me that the predictability of an orbit altered by a gentle nudge may well exceed that of an orbit altered by a solid whack.
Would you rather the object remained trackable and predictable, or became unstable and maybe whangs into us a few orbits later?
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Yeah, but not unconditionally surrender. This was to prevent the Great War mistakes. Japan had seriously violated just about every reasonable practice of war, and the dropping of the atom bomb shortened the war, and help stop them.
Japan was not going to surrender in two weeks, they were via diplomatic back channels suing for peace, this is not the same as offering unconditional surrender. In the end the Japanese still insisted that they be allowed to keep their Emporer, and the allies agreed to this demand, instead of being belligerent. I don't know where you got this myth that the Japanese were willing to surrender unconditionally, but the whole point of further increasing the size of their armed services during and after Okinawa was to make taking the islands of Japan as much like the battle for Okinawa as possible. That would have resulted in extreme causalities on both sides. The idea was that by a few tens of thousands of casualties the Americans and their allies would agree to more favourable terms than unconditional surrender. Heck if it had been like Okinawa they might even have managed to force those terms, which would have been a disaster.
The Japanese were determined to fight on to get a better peace deal. They had already lost the war so of course they were suing for peace. The only question remains, is it right to target military installations in the cities of your enemy during a time of war to force his surrender, knowing that tens of thousands of civilians will die. If you believe the allies were right to demand unconditional surrender (which I do), and if you believe that the Americans should have kept their nerve conducting the invasion and no accepted a lesser peace, then one is forced to ask the following question. Which course of action would cost more civilian lives, more destruction of infrastructure, and more military lives. The answer to all three is invasion. Dropping the bomb saved lives, civilian, military, and preserved what little remained of Japans infrastructure.
It is to my mind, the only time in history dropping the bomb would be acceptable, because of the unique set of circumstances at the time.
Alright Woodrow Wilson, if thats what you want to believe.
I firmly believe that Hitler was helped by the fact that he was able to convince many Germans that the treaty of Versaille was unfair because the 'November Criminals' had signed it while Germany still had some effective military and could still fight the war. Coupled with the fact that the terms of the treaty were humiliating themselves (full blame for the war placed on Germany, reparations, Sudentenland handed over to the new Czechoslovakia, splitting Germany in two). Unconditional surrender is not about humiliation. The requirement of unconditional surrender existed because the conduct of those states with which the allies were fighting required wholesale removal of thier leadership and replacement by an authority that would be cast iron allies of the West. Unconditional surrender was just another way of saying to the militarist leaders of Japan "we will dismantle your government, and you will be tried for war crimes".
The estimated American casualties alone for the invasion of Japan are around two to four times that. Now consider that they are better equipped and supplied than their conscripted Japanese adversary who would have suffered far worse. In addition most of the Japanese casualties would be civilian.
I'm certainly not glorifying the killing of civilians. However, if I presented to you a choice. Kill a quarter of a million Japanese now, or kill half a million Americans and 4 million Japanese over three to four months of bloody combat, what would you choose? If you choose to kill four million more people just because you don't like the word nuclear or because you think in some way being shot is better than dieing in giant fireball, then I believe you to be a cold heartless bastard.
Hell the United States is still handing out purple hearts of 1945 manufacture because of the anticipated casualties of the Japanese campaign were higher than the sum total of wounded or dead servicemen in every war since.
I suggested what the Japanese intent was. They believed they could break their 'inferior' American foe. The Americans had plans for Olympic which forecast many more casualties that the Japanese thought the Americans could take. All you have done is prove my point, the Americans would have accepted the high casualties and pushed on, since they planned for them anyway. The bottom line is that while the Japanese hoped to bring the war to an end with tens of thousands of casualties by breaking the American will to fight, that was not going to happen. You are suggesting an option (American capitulation to the Japanese plan) which was never on the table to begin with.